Tiny School Fights Policy on Diversity : Education: Thomas Aquinas College fears that proposed new standards by accrediting body could threaten its existence.

Hidden in the hills north of Santa Paula, tiny Thomas Aquinas College is so remote that even some Ventura County residents are unaware that it exists.

But the 210-student Catholic school is emerging from relative obscurity as a leader in a national debate over whether a college’s accreditation should be tied to its racial and ethnic diversity.

The Western Assn. of Colleges and Schools, which accredits 145 four-year colleges and universities in California, Hawaii and Guam, has proposed a new written policy that emphasizes diversity in faculty hiring, student admissions and curriculum.

Although the accreditation agency insists that the policy merely clarifies existing standards, some college officials worry about its scope.

The policy focuses mainly on racial and ethnic diversity, but it also refers to the importance of the representation of women, the disabled and gays at both private and public colleges.

Worried they may be forced to hire gays and change their time-honored curricula, a group of religious schools led by Thomas Aquinas College are protesting the policy.

“If it is established,” Thomas Aquinas tutor Richard Ferrier said, “the college might be imperiled.”

Some large public institutions such as UCLA and UC Berkeley are also concerned about the proposed policy, but not because of its diversity guidelines.

Founded 22 years ago, Thomas Aquinas’ student body is roughly 50% women and 94% white, and its teaching staff is made up almost exclusively of white men. Following the teachings of the Catholic Church, the school has a policy against hiring openly gay people.

By no standard is the college a model of diversity.

The most stubbornly traditional part of the college is its course of study: a Great Books curriculum with a list of about 200 authors that ranges from Euclid to Mark Twain, but includes only two women--Jane Austen and a faculty member who wrote a text on music theory.

Rather than apologize for their unabashed traditionalism, college officials are proud of their reputation for encouraging students in serious scholarly pursuits.

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And they are worried that the Western Assn. of Colleges and Schools could force them to dilute the quality of their program and undermine their mission to provide a classic liberal education.

At the core of the accrediting agency’s proposed program is the assumption that colleges should respond to society’s dramatic demographic changes in recent decades.

In order to be good, the policy asserts, colleges should be diverse.

“Students need to be prepared to function effectively in a world in which there are many different cultures and many different races and ethnic groups,” said Stephen S. Weiner, executive director of the Oakland-based commission that accredits four-year colleges and universities.

But he said the agency has no intention of setting hiring or admission quotas or telling schools how to teach their students.

“We don’t prescribe admission standards,” Weiner said. “We don’t require ethnic studies requirements. We don’t require the curricula be constructed in a particular way.”

The proposed policy only clarifies and details guidelines on diversity that the agency has followed since 1988. “We are not changing the rules,” he said. Indeed, when Thomas Aquinas came up for an accreditation review last year, the association renewed the school’s credentials for up to eight years.

All the college had to do to meet the agency’s diversity guidelines was to defend in writing its curriculum and hiring and admission practices.

That’s all the accrediting agency wants: “What is required is that an institution think about these issues,” Weiner said.

Thomas Aquinas officials said, however, they are concerned that by putting diversity standards into a written, detailed policy, the agency is opening the door to future intrusions into the autonomy of educational institutions.

“We’re opposed to the proposition that diversity has an essential connection to educational quality,” Ferrier said. “That imperils our program. That means that you would choose texts or subjects of study on the basis of ethnic or racial background or other extrinsic considerations and not on the basis of their being great works.”

Eventually, he said, the agency may decide to withhold accreditation from schools deemed not committed enough to diversity.

“One day there’s a different executive director,” Ferrier said. “Then what do the assurances of the former executive director mean?”

Joining Thomas Aquinas in its opposition are nine other private religious colleges, including Biola University in La Mirada, Southern California College in Costa Mesa and Azusa Pacific University.

Ferrier pointed out that some big public universities in the state have also voiced concerns about the proposed policy.

Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien of UC Berkeley, for example, recommended in a letter to the Western Assn. of Colleges and Schools that the policy state that it is a guideline only, and that there is no possibility of sanctions for failure to comply.

But the chancellor’s letter departed drastically from the position of Thomas Aquinas College on diversity by stating that the policy should strongly oppose discrimination against gays.

UCLA officials have objected even more strenuously to the policy.

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Vice Chancellor Raymond Paredes said that UCLA, unlike Thomas Aquinas, supports diversity in education. “Diversity is an indispensable part of academic excellence.”

But the accrediting association already has too many standards that colleges must meet during expensive and time-consuming accreditation reviews, he said. Each college is reviewed at least once every eight years.

“If WASC were indeed to impose a diversity standard, we wouldn’t have any difficulty meeting it,” he said. “It’s simply a question of whether WASC is exceeding its proper role in establishing still one more standard.”

But Weiner argued that federal and state governments may begin imposing their own standards for racial and ethnic diversity if colleges and universities fail to police themselves.

“Colleges and universities do not want more authority vested in government,” he said.